Restaurants not fans of food trucks

Imagine that you owned a small business and had invested money, time, and sweat equity into making it a success. One day a competitor pulls up in front of your establishment and starts selling his products out of the back of his truck, siphoning away the customer base you'd worked so hard to build.

If annoyance, even outright anger, would be your response, you can relate to how many big city restaurant owners feel about the food truck phenomenon.

Though they're not yet much of a presence here in Western Massachusetts, food trucks are becoming fixtures in major cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Restaurant owners in those locales are crying "foul," particularly when food trucks set up shop down the street.

In Boston, where the number of licensed food trucks has doubled over the last twelve months, the growing acrimony between established restaurants and food truck owners has boiled over into a controversy involving some of New England's best know restaurant commentators, the Andelman brothers.

The Andelmans, best known for their "Phantom Gourmet" programs, were "banned" by one food truck operator as a result of comments made on a radio show that asserted food trucks represented "unfair competition" for existing restaurants.

Food truck operators defend themselves as committed, passionate "foodies" who do much to bring good value to consumers. Many of them also claim that they support area farmers and food producers by using local ingredients.

Moreover, since most food trucks rely on social media to promote their whereabouts, food truck owners assert that they really don't compete with nearby restaurants, but instead are attracting their own unique clientele.

Pressure from the restaurant community has already led to several cities enacting ordinances that restrict food truck operations. These include bans on setting up near existing eateries and time limits on how long a truck can remain at any given location.

Food truck operators are critical of such regulatory efforts, labeling them as heavy-handed and intrusive.

The food truck controversy, it seems, is likely to intensify in the months ahead as more and more mobile kitchens hit the road.